Serf Gestures. Bodily Dimension of Social Memory in Ivan Franko’s Prose

Abstract

The article is an analysis of the representations of body in selected novels authored by the Ukrainian writer, Ivan Franko, which form a part of the Galician discourses about the memory of serfdom. As the main theoretical context, the author of the article adopts Paul Connerton’s concept of the body as a medium of social memory. She pays attention to how the characters in Franko’s novels — representatives of the first generation of Ruthenian/Ukrainian intelligentsia of the peasant origin of the 1870–1890s — recreate past serf relations between the Ruthenian peasantry and Polish nobility with the help of bodily poses, gestures, and interactions. The author concludes by stating that the bodily dimension of memory about serfdom forces characters to have special control over their body. The control becomes part of the process of emancipation of own social-cum-national identity.